New player to the game - here's my impressions

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes.
And I cite as my evidence: the real world.
Population growth by birth rate is negative in high-amenity Europe.
Population growth by birth rate in Africa, where the only resources they have is space and nature: explosive.
Quod erat demonstradum.

I think you have no clue as to WHY these disparities exist and I can tell you one thing and it has NOTHING to do with space. My country have ALLOT of space per inhabitants and still have one of the lowest population growth there is, while countries such as the US still have a relatively high population growth among other things breaking the mould of most western countries.

Population growth is more of a social thing rather than economic or space driven... please read up on the subject before you actually try to get a point across.

Realistically most growth for colonies would come from migration for a very long time where people would migrate to a more favourable economically lucrative society. This is something we have witnesses in the past. If there are no economical or cultural reason to migrate people probably would not o so either.

Actual population growth should stem more from social factors and less from actual living space. There are no evidence that tells us people would create bigger families unless there were some incentives to do so... the huge boost in population from early 1900 until today is entirely driven by technology and progress in medicine making children survive and that created huge families... as generations grow up in a world where children survived longer people just tended to have less children as a response and that is what we have seen world wide despite economy, culture, economy and religion... unless child birth have been artificially compromised as in prohibiting birth control or as in China restricting the number of children to less than two there seem to be a pretty stable overall rate of birth and death in human population if left alone.

I suppose that you don't know that the amount of humans that live today is more than have lived through the entire history of the human species if you count from the start of the 1900.

 

[Archael90]

I think you have no clue as to WHY these disparities exist and I can tell you one thing and it has NOTHING to do with space. My country have ALLOT of space per inhabitants and still have one of the lowest population growth there is, while countries such as the US still have a relatively high population growth among other things breaking the mould of most western countries.

Population growth is more of a social thing rather than economic or space driven... please read up on the subject before you actually try to get a point across.

Realistically most growth for colonies would come from migration for a very long time where people would migrate to a more favourable economically lucrative society. This is something we have witnesses in the past. If there are no economical or cultural reason to migrate people probably would not o so either.

Actual population growth should stem more from social factors and less from actual living space. There are no science that tells us people would create bigger families unless there were some incentives to do so... the huge boost in population from early 1900 until today is entirely driven by technology in progress in medicine making children survive and that created huge families... as generations grow up in a world where children survived longer people just tended to have less children as a response and that is what we have seen world wide despite economy, culture, economy and religion... unless child birth have been artificially compromised as in prohibiting birth control or as in china restricting the number of children to less then two there seem to be a pretty stable overall rate of birth and death in human population of left alone.

I suppose that you don't know that the amount of humans that live today is more than have lived through the entire history of the human species if you count from the start of the 1900.

Well... actually pop growth is tied to density, and thus housing

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227315935_Population_Density_Key_Factor_in_Declining_Human_Fertility

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well... actually pop growth is tied to density, and thus housing

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227315935_Population_Density_Key_Factor_in_Declining_Human_Fertility

That is not really what the study say though... it is linked with population density and it "probably" have in impact. There are many factors that drive population growth.

It's not as if we have problem with space on Earth for the population we have... there is also a social factor that drive density to begin with as humans are social animals and tend to want to live in large clusters. That is pretty evident when looking at earth from space during the night for example...

There are many things linked with population density in society such as education, healthcare, information sharing, life style, career opportunities etc..

To me it is not surprising there is a correlation between population density and overall fertility

Here is another similar publication that describe it in a different angle and with more up to date data and published this year...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343452851_Increasing_population_densities_predict_decreasing_fertility_rates_over_time_A_174-nation_investigation

It also is pretty obvious that the curve is flattened out over time since the last 100 years in terms of fertility as fertility has drops much faster than the density of population have increased. So there have been social factors involved that is not explained by the density increase.

We know that Earth will at some point reach a peak in human population growth and become stable and population density probably is one factor. Humans also don't seem to be alone in this behaviour in the animal kingdom either. The difference is that technology can impact the fertility versus density relationship for humans with other animals it is mother nature that set that limit most of the time.

I also think it was interesting that Africa was actually going against the trend in that it increased fertility rate with more density...

 

[GnoSIS]

So, it turns out it's not just us the toxic vocal minority that thinks the game is broken?

Just wow, color me surprised! And, and can you imagine? We might be correct about all the rest as well. What? Oh the horror, quickly, call the admins, this post needs to be supressed and merged into the special "Performance, AI, Micromanagement, and everything else that is wrong" thread, otherwise this will dominate the forums!

 

[methegrate]

So, it turns out it's not just us the toxic vocal minority that thinks the game is broken?

Just wow, color me surprised! And, and can you imagine? We might be correct about all the rest as well. What? Oh the horror, quickly, call the admins, this post needs to be supressed and merged into the special "Performance, AI, Micromanagement, and everything else that is wrong" thread, otherwise this will dominate the forums!

I think the game is at least a little bit broken no matter who you are. The all-things to all-people approach means that the game embraces fundamentally conflicting and incompatible designs. You can't have a 4x game that's designed for both single player and multiplayer at the same time, for example. When you make that promise you get both player bases coming in expecting a game that's been designed for them.

The result is what you see in another thread right now, actually. People are debating whether it would break the game if combat had enough depth that you needed to pause the game in order to effectively play it. For single player mode the answer is obviously not, that's a feature not a bug. For multiplayer the answer is obviously yes, you can't pause everyone's game at every war. If Stellaris was clear about whether it is an SP-with-MP or an MP-with-SP game this wouldn't be a problem. You could answer the question of which design should take priority.

Stellaris seems to miss the fact that for virtually any type of game, elements of its design will be actively hostile to the design of other types of games. Strategy games have incentive structures that get in the way or role playing and vice versa. Single player games and multiplayer games have fundamentally different setups. A sandbox game is ruined when monsters come calling; a competitive game is boring if they don't.

As far as I can tell, Stellaris has actively marketed itself as a GSG 4X role playing space opera strategy game for both single player and multiplayer crowds in which you can do everything from captain the Enterprise as it makes first contact to command vast armadas and negotiate at the Galactic Senate. By dint of scope, most of these features ended up half baked or perfunctory on their own merits. (Has first contact ever mattered to anyone's game? Or pre-FTL civilizations? Does anyone remember those galaxy-shaping events five minutes after they've happened?)

More than that, though. Stellaris hasn't just overpromised, it promised features that actively conflict with each other. No matter who you are the game will disappoint on some level by definition. There's a ton of potential here, but also a ton of work to be done. And it really needs to start by just picking a lane.

 

[GnoSIS]

I think the game is at least a little bit broken no matter who you are. The all-things to all-people approach means that the game embraces fundamentally conflicting and incompatible designs. You can't have a 4x game that's designed for both single player and multiplayer at the same time, for example. When you make that promise you get both player bases coming in expecting a game that's been designed for them.

The result is what you see in another thread right now, actually. People are debating whether it would break the game if combat had enough depth that you needed to pause the game in order to effectively play it. For single player mode the answer is obviously not, that's a feature not a bug. For multiplayer the answer is obviously yes, you can't pause everyone's game at every war. If Stellaris was clear about whether it is an SP-with-MP or an MP-with-SP game, this wouldn't be a problem. You could answer the question of which design could take priority.

Stellaris seems to miss the fact that for virtually any type of game, elements of its design will be actively hostile to the design of other types of games. Strategy games have incentive structures that get in the way or role playing and vice versa. Single player games and multiplayer games have fundamentally different setups. A sandbox game is ruined when monsters come calling; a competitive game is boring if they don't.

As far as I can tell, Stellaris has actively marketed itself as a GSG 4X role playing space opera strategy game for both single player and multiplayer crowds in which you can do everything from captain the Enterprise as it makes first contact to command vast armadas and negotiate at the Galactic Senate. By dint of scope, most of these features ended up half baked or perfunctory on their own merits. (Has first contact ever mattered to anyone's game? Or pre-FTL civilizations? Does anyone remember those galaxy-shaping events five minutes after they've happened?)

More than that, though. Stellaris hasn't just overpromised, it promised features that actively conflict with each other. No matter who you are the game will disappoint on some level by definition. There's a ton of potential here, but also a ton of work to be done. And it really needs to start by just picking a lane.

And the lane they picked is to close their eyes and pretend everything is all right.

Checking steamspy, Stellaris has from 2 to 5m, this doesn't include consoles ofc, but it shows that the game is not as big as we or they think it is. Nothing compared to Civ 5 that has over 10m sales.

The idea of having a little bit of everything is good, only if you wish to draw multiple crowds into the product. It breaks down once that crowd reaches the meat of the game and expect it to be functional and mature product and not a mess of multiple systems.

So as I said in other threads, they need to break some eggs and have systems and things make sense at last.

 

[Constans337]

Liggs hit the nail on the head. I wasn't sure if it was even worth my time to bother providing this feedback. I've been thinking about just ditching the game and moving on to something more fun, but I can tell that the developers have put a lot of work into this game and it seems to have potential.

As I've said elsewhere, come back in a year. I can't imagine Paradox will abandon this game but it could take a year or possibly, as with HoI, an edition or two (!). There are indeed lots of good ideas here but it needs lots of work to integrate, fix and streamline. If I recall correctly, I believe it was with Golden Century that a player revolt and boycott over the state of the EU4 base game led to a year-long reworking of the game. I'm just in the middle of a multiplayer EU4 game and enjoying it immensely. Perhaps we'll get that again with this DLC. I'm just hanging around until the patch releases hoping against hope that maybe the developer-length patch might have something in it to make the game more fun.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

As I've said elsewhere, come back in a year. I can't imagine Paradox will abandon this game but it could take a year or possibly, as with HoI, an edition or two (!). There are indeed lots of good ideas here but it needs lots of work to integrate, fix and streamline. If I recall correctly, I believe it was with Golden Century that a player revolt and boycott over the state of the EU4 base game led to a year-long reworking of the game. I'm just in the middle of a multiplayer EU4 game and enjoying it immensely. Perhaps we'll get that again with this DLC. I'm just hanging around until the patch releases hoping against hope that maybe the developer-length patch might have something in it to make the game more fun.

The game have had four years to improve but have not really improved that much... in my opinion the game is worse off now than a year after release as most new mechanics added are so removed from the game they almost might not have been there in the first place. Most mechanics are just interacting with itself.

 

[Yourss]

The result is what you see in another thread right now, actually. People are debating whether it would break the game if combat had enough depth that you needed to pause the game in order to effectively play it. For single player mode the answer is obviously not, that's a feature not a bug. For multiplayer the answer is obviously yes, you can't pause everyone's game at every war. If Stellaris was clear about whether it is an SP-with-MP or an MP-with-SP game this wouldn't be a problem. You could answer the question of which design should take priority.

Even discounting multiplayer, and how the AI handles complex systems. The situations that you have to pause the game for when you have one planet should be different than when you have 5, 10, or 50. The same thing applies to fleets of 1 vs 5 or 10. If you increase the threshold that you need to pause for to 50 planets, so you can play that man without pausing. The gameplay loops are likely to be boring at 5 planets. What this means is that the gameplay loops themselves need to change through the course of the game, right now they don't.

 

[methegrate]

Even discounting multiplayer, and how the AI handles complex systems. The situations that you have to pause the game for when you have one planet should be different than when you have 5, 10, or 50. The same thing applies to fleets of 1 vs 5 or 10. If you increase the threshold that you need to pause for to 50 planets, so you can play that man without pausing. The gameplay loops are likely to be boring at 5 planets. What this means is that the gameplay loops themselves need to change through the course of the game, right now they don't.

I'm not entirely sure that's right. In the early game, most of what you do is explore systems, colonize planets and manage events. In the middle game, most of what you're supposed to do is manage internal politics and external diplomacy. (In reality, what you actually do is spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen, then fighting occasional wars.) In the late game, it seems like most of what you're supposed to do is build big late-game projects (such as megastructures) and fight the Crisis.

Each of these involve specifically different activities. The middle game activity is badly broken, but I don't think it's right to say that the game isn't at least designed to scale. I'd argue that the early, middle and late games do play quite differently, even when that's not necessarily a good thing.

Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure I understand your argument. Yes, complexity should scale. But I'm not sure what you mean by "increas[ing] the threashold that you need to pause for to 50 planets." If I'm managing a large economy, I'm more likely to pause to review it all and take stock of my decisions. If I'm managing a single planet, I probably don't have to do that. If I'm fighting a massive war spanning hundreds of systems, I'm more likely to need to pause than if I'm commanding a dozen corvettes. I'm not sure I understand what you have in mind when you say the gameplay loops need to change based on this.

 

[Yourss]

I'm not entirely sure that's right. In the early game, most of what you do is explore systems, colonize planets and manage events. In the middle game, most of what you're supposed to do is manage internal politics and external diplomacy. (In reality, what you actually do is spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen, then fighting occasional wars.) In the late game, it seems like most of what you're supposed to do is build big late-game projects (such as megastructures) and fight the Crisis.

Each of these involve specifically different activities. The middle game activity is badly broken, but I don't think it's right to say that the game isn't at least designed to scale. I'd argue that the early, middle and late games do play quite differently, even when that's not necessarily a good thing.

Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure I understand your argument. Yes, complexity should scale. But I'm not sure what you mean by "increas[ing] the threashold that you need to pause for to 50 planets." If I'm managing a large economy, I'm more likely to pause to review it all and take stock of my decisions. If I'm managing a single planet, I probably don't have to do that. If I'm fighting a massive war spanning hundreds of systems, I'm more likely to need to pause than if I'm commanding a dozen corvettes. I'm not sure I understand what you have in mind when you say the gameplay loops need to change based on this.

What I mean is that if you make 50 planets playable without excessive micro, then apply the same gameplay loops to one planet, you end up with very little to do.

The gameplay loops are currently designed around the first few hours of play. Beyond that, the mechanics scale to the current micro madness as everything demands your attention all the time, and tiny imbalances cause huge swings in your resource output. It's been very rare that I make it anywhere near end game now days, since the only way to prevent the micro mess is to not expand my territory.

Needing to pause as an average, but knowledgeable player, should be a rare event where you encounter a situation you are unfamiliar with. Anything more than that will make multiplayer unplayable, and likely indicates a system that the AI won't handle well.

Basically, running a starting empire with one system, and one that spans half the galaxy, have completely different levels of concerns. Right now, all it does it multiply the single planets concerns by the number of planets I have.

 

[-Marauder-]

Hey OP, want to know the saddest thing? Pops used to resettle on their own. They used to migrate to new planets if allowed to do so. They took this out of the game, then reintroduced it and hid it behind a galactic council resolution. Why? No good reason. Just to find things to add to the galactic council I guess.

 

[Archael90]

I have to admit that i have fell in love in Stellaris because back on 1.3 (od 1.2 i dont remember) it was ultimate RP space sandbox game, or as i prefer to call it "space novel generator". And im really upset that devs decided to leave this approach and they try more and more to turn Stellaris into common space strategy game. Each new patch, and DLC shows they are going this way... So they choose their line and are going there succesively destroying what made this game so unique (for me at least).

Hey OP, want to know the saddest thing? Pops used to resettle on their own. They used to migrate to new planets if allowed to do so. They took this out of the game, then reintroduced it and hid it behind a galactic council resolution. Why? No good reason. Just to find things to add to the galactic council I guess.

Actualy no, they didnt remove it.
Migration in file system took some time and pop was half here and half there.
In 2.2 devs havnt remove it but change it so nie pops are still taking time to move and grow at the same time, and it is shown as migration. When pops are migrating faster than growing, they are declining, but in most cases they just slow growth on one planet and fasten it on another. And this is almost exactly the same as it was in tile system.
Almost because there are two differences (three if you want to incist)
1. Its more smoother than it was (+)
2. Back then when pop shows up it was the same pop it was removed. Now it is bonus added to already existing pop, so it is not exactly same pop (+/-)
(3. In tile system there was max 25 pops on planet and 1 of them migrating was bigger part, and looked as working faster than in post 2.2 when on one planet there can be hundreds of pops (-))

 

[Akka le Vil]

The game have had four years to improve but have not really improved that much... in my opinion the game is worse off now than a year after release as most new mechanics added are so removed from the game they almost might not have been there in the first place. Most mechanics are just interacting with itself.

Honestly, that seems to be a very Paradox thing. EU4 suffers immensely from this (to the point I just don't even play it anymore, it's bloat upon bloat upon bloat of disconnected mechanisms), and Stellaris is creeping up there.
Once again, I blame the DLC mania, where they have to add systems to claim that there is something new so people will buy them, and they force them down the throat of people who don't care to be able to make more down the line.

 

[-Marauder-]

Actualy no, they didnt remove it.

Yes, they did. You're going "actually no, but yes.".

Migration in file system took some time and pop was half here and half there.

You mean tile system. The only argument here is that pops resettled but it took them more time. This isn't an argument against that this was in the game already and they took it out. Speeding it up too doesn't mean they didn't take something that was already in the game out. You're also conveniently cherry-picking what you're responding to, ignoring the part about overpopulation they introduced around the same time.

In 2.2 devs havnt remove it but change it so nie pops are still taking time to move and grow at the same time, and it is shown as migration. When pops are migrating faster than growing, they are declining, but in most cases they just slow growth on one planet and fasten it on another. And this is almost exactly the same as it was in tile system.

This is an entirely different system. "Migration" now just eats into pop growth. It does NOT move pops from one planet to another. Why do you insist on constantly spreading misinformation?

 

[Archael90]

You're also conveniently cherry-picking what you're responding to, ignoring the part about overpopulation they introduced around the same time.

Because its irrelevant in discussion.

This is an entirely different system. "Migration" now just eats into pop growth. It does NOT move pops from one planet to another. Why do you insist on constantly spreading misinformation?

No, it is not entire new system.
It was resettlement, and it is resettlement. Just because it looks different doesnt means it is something different.
Base is the same - pop is moving from one planet to another.
Change is that now it is removed from growth on one planet and added to growth on another one based on needs.

"Greater than ourselves" edict is somethig different. Its basically automatic pop resettlement, and this is different than migration. Just because it looks simmilar to old tile migration, doesnt means it is the same.

 

[Incompetent]

Honestly, that seems to be a very Paradox thing. EU4 suffers immensely from this (to the point I just don't even play it anymore, it's bloat upon bloat upon bloat of disconnected mechanisms), and Stellaris is creeping up there.
Once again, I blame the DLC mania, where they have to add systems to claim that there is something new so people will buy them, and they force them down the throat of people who don't care to be able to make more down the line.

If the complaints are about, say, the Galactic Community or Archaeology being no fun, or how Hive Minds are neglected, or how the War in Heaven doesn't make any sense, then sure, that's a DLC bloat problem. The majority of the complaints people make about "how Stellaris has lost its way" though are more about botched overhauls to absolutely essential 4X game mechanics, such as how pops grow and make resources, how ships move, how ownership/control of territory works and how AI empires make decisions. Even most of the performance problems come from core mechanics rather than DLC features.

With most of these core overhauls, I don't think the devs did them in order to support a specific DLC, but rather out of a general feeling that they didn't like the gameplay up to that point and felt they could do better. To be honest, I don't think that's a bad motivation in general, but you have to be prepared to see it through and change the plan when bad unintended consequences become apparent from player feedback. So I don't think the problem is DLC per se but rather a "DLC mentality" when it comes to core, non-DLC features (i.e. they get compartmentalized into "that expansion we worked on back in January" and the devs stop thinking about them in a serious way).

 

[Oscot]

What I mean is that if you make 50 planets playable without excessive micro, then apply the same gameplay loops to one planet, you end up with very little to do.

The gameplay loops are currently designed around the first few hours of play.

This is a good way of putting it.

In Crusader Kings, the max number of counties you have to manage is around 10, whether you're in early game or lategame, because once you get above 10 you are obliged to hand them off to your vassals. And in Crusader Kings your (peacetime) mouse actions really do qualitatively change from [earlygame] micromanaging your county buildings and your Chancellor Fabrications and riding the "Extort Peasants" decision for 50 gold a time, to [lategame] managing very carefully which Imperial scion your children should have sex with, and you never touch the county building screen ever again.

Why is this mode change just missing in Stellaris? Sector governors do exist; why does no-one feel able to use them, and focus on other things?

I think the problem is... threefold.

• The first is purely a difference in the narrative of subordinate AI governors. In Crusader Kings, subordinate AI governors are basically the entire gameplay loop because from its very first design document, CK's entire shtick has been Your subordinates hate you and herding them into line is the majority of the gameplay. Contrast with Stellaris, where (in spite of Stellaris' DD on the subject being curiously similar to CK's), Sector Governors are seen as being basically a QoL feature. We are encouraged to think of sectors as a management tool for our convenience. So in Stellaris, if a sector isn'd doing what we want it to, it's a broken feature, whereas in CK, if a vassal isn't doing what we want it to, it's working as designed.
• The above is not to strawman complaints about AI governors as simply being "Good is a point of view Anakin" failures of perspective. In CK, AI governors don't go in for crashing this planetary economy with no survivors. The Stellaris AI governor is not working properly regardless of whether you think it's supposed to be a convenience feature or an anti-convenience feature. So there are genuine technical problems and fixing them would help.
• That describes the problem that you can't move off of the earlygame gameplay loop because the automation is too incompetent. But there's another reason you can't move off the earlygame gameplay loop: because, as @methegrate said, there isn't a midgame gameplay loop to move onto. There are various reasons for this: my favourite one to blame is the paucity of targets. The problem with Stellaris' symmetric starts is that everyone is generally the same strength, which makes quick wars against progressively less weak neighbours (the bread and butter of EUIV's midgame) impossible as there is no escalating series of less weak neighbours - and even if the starts weren't symmetric, a max of 30 independent states to EUIV's ~500 would mean that it's an extremely abrupt series. Nor can you do the CK strategy and spend half your time beating up inwards enemies, because - as per the previous point - your subordinate Sector Governors are QoL features, not truculent vassals who'd pay more tax if you orbital-drop-podded xenomorphs on their sector capital and chopped off their abdominal ganglia.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

What I mean is that if you make 50 planets playable without excessive micro, then apply the same gameplay loops to one planet, you end up with very little to do.

The gameplay loops are currently designed around the first few hours of play. Beyond that, the mechanics scale to the current micro madness as everything demands your attention all the time, and tiny imbalances cause huge swings in your resource output. It's been very rare that I make it anywhere near end game now days, since the only way to prevent the micro mess is to not expand my territory.

Needing to pause as an average, but knowledgeable player, should be a rare event where you encounter a situation you are unfamiliar with. Anything more than that will make multiplayer unplayable, and likely indicates a system that the AI won't handle well.

Basically, running a starting empire with one system, and one that spans half the galaxy, have completely different levels of concerns. Right now, all it does it multiply the single planets concerns by the number of planets I have.

This is why Paradox should have taken more inspirations from Distant Worlds which is a game that are engaging from day one to the end with roughly the same level of interactions at the end as in the beginning. This game scales very well from dealing with one planets and it's logistical hurdles and resource shortcomings as it is an empire spanning even hundreds of systems.

Stellaris need some really good automating system... the problem is that the game is too much about min/max resources and too little about governing what you have. This make automation more or less impossible to fix, in my opinion.

 

[sillyrobot]

As I've said elsewhere, come back in a year. I can't imagine Paradox will abandon this game but it could take a year or possibly, as with HoI, an edition or two (!). There are indeed lots of good ideas here but it needs lots of work to integrate, fix and streamline. If I recall correctly, I believe it was with Golden Century that a player revolt and boycott over the state of the EU4 base game led to a year-long reworking of the game. I'm just in the middle of a multiplayer EU4 game and enjoying it immensely. Perhaps we'll get that again with this DLC. I'm just hanging around until the patch releases hoping against hope that maybe the developer-length patch might have something in it to make the game more fun.

That's effectively what I did last year. *Looks around*. Nope, nothing changed.